The archbishop, the mansion and the beach house

By Chris Vedelago, Royce Millar & Ben Schneiders

12 February 2018 — 4:07pm

At the same time the Catholic Church was fighting a family who refused to accept $55,000 compensation for each of their abused daughters, it purchased a Kew mansion for Archbishop Denis Hart now valued at $2.25 million.

Three years later, the church also spent $872,000 on a beach house with bay views in Dromana for Archbishop Hart, which he now personally owns after buying it off the Archdiocese for $1.12 million in 2017.

Details of the church’s residential property purchases have emerged from a ground-breaking, six-month Age investigation into the wealth of the church, which identified assets of at least $9 billion in Victoria and $30 billion nationwide.

Chrissie Foster's two daughters, Emma and Katie, were abused by a Catholic priest

Photo: Jason South

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The revelations of the extraordinary wealth have raised serious questions about the church’s handling of compensation, including evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that increased payouts to abuse survivors could lead to cuts to social welfare programs.

In 2005, Chrissie and Anthony Foster were in a protracted compensation battle with the Melbourne archdiocese over the repeated rape of their two primary school-aged daughters, Emma and Katie, by paedophile priest Kevin O’Donnell.

The abuse had taken place at Sacred Heart Primary School in Oakleigh in Melbourne’s south-east through the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The Fosters had rejected the archdiocese’s offer of $50,000 on behalf of Emma made under its Melbourne Response redress scheme, and had sued the church instead. “The offer just seemed so pathetically low, so inadequate for the damage that had been caused,” Ms Foster told The Age in January.

Katie Foster

Photo: Supplied

In response, the church reversed its previous position and denied the girls had been abused.

Katie was permanently brain damaged after being hit by a car while under the influence of alcohol in 1999. In 2008, after being trapped in a vicious cycle of depression, drug abuse and self-harm, Emma took her own life.

Emma Foster

Photo: Supplied

It was at the height of the bitter legal fight in 2005 that the archdiocese purchased the five-bedroom, Georgian-style mansion in Kew for $1.65 million.

Archbishop Hart has listed the property as his home address since, according to records obtained by The Age. It was valued by the City of Boroondara in January 2016 at $2.25 million.

The Kew home of Archbishop Denis Hart

Photo: realestateview.com.au

Chrissie Foster had been unaware of the purchase until informed of it by The Age in January.

“To hear that while they were fighting us, the church was spending up big on a private house is infuriating. Surprising, but after everything, not surprising,” she said.

Archdiocese communications director Shane Healy said the Kew property had been purchased because the Archbishop's previous home was "not fit for purpose due to its size and the cost of ongoing maintenance".

In another property deal involving Archbishop Hart, the archdiocese purchased a beach house in Dromana for $872,000 in 2008.

Mr Healy said the property was bought for the Archbishop's personal use.

In mid-2017, the church sold the house to Archbishop Hart for $1.12 million, who bought it using a combination of personal savings and an inheritance.

The $1.12 million Dromana beach house now owned by Archbishop Denis Hart.

Photo: Justin McManus

The price the church paid for the two properties – $2.5 million – is almost a quarter of the total amount paid to abuse survivors under the archdiocese’ controversial Melbourne Response redress scheme in the 20 years until 2015.

In a statement tendered in 2014 to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, church lawyer Richard Leder of Corrs Chambers Westgarth said the archdiocese had been reluctant to settle with the Fosters because it might encourage other victims to to sue the church.

“... we were concerned that a settlement for a substantial sum could detract from the effectiveness of the Melbourne Response,” Mr Leder wrote.

The church has been criticised for decades over the level of compensation it has provided to survivors.

The royal commission reported payments averaged $35,000 under the Melbourne Response, the compensation scheme established by the then archbishop George Pell in 1996. A total of $11.3 million had been paid to 324 survivors of child sexual abuse by 2015.

Mr Healy said the archdiocese had increased the cap of the Melbourne Response to $150,000, and survivors of child abuse who received amounts under previous caps have been able to obtain additional redress. He said an additional $17.2 million has been paid since early 2015.

Catholic officials have previously claimed that boosting payouts to the victims of child sexual abuse could lead to cuts to social welfare programs or force the church to sell assets or borrow to meet its financial obligations.

Ms Foster said it was clear the church can afford to pay more. “It’s a pretence to extract themselves from their responsibilities for the damage they have caused.”

The Catholic Church in Australia, which comprises 28 dioceses and dozens of religious orders, has been notoriously secretive about its wealth. Church leaders have repeatedly publicly underestimated church assets and resisted greater financial accountability.

The Age investigation involved obtaining property valuations from 36 Victorian councils, including most of the Melbourne metropolitan area, Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo, many under freedom of information.

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It identified more than 1860 church-owned properties with “capital improved value” (land plus buildings) of just under $7 billion.

It then used property and other financial data it obtained to extrapolate to wider Victoria, and nationally, arriving at a conservative estimate of more than $9 billion in Catholic Church-owned wealth for the state, and more than $30 billion across Australia.

Ben Schneiders is an investigative reporter at The Age with a background reporting on industrial relations, business, politics and social issues. A two-time Walkley Award winner, he has been part of The Age’s investigative unit since 2015.